


Ready for the Colors to Turn to Gold

by Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e25 Facets, Episode: s04e06 Rejoined, Gen, Injury, Zhian'tara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29795898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down/pseuds/Squirrels_All_The_Way_Down
Summary: Jadzia’s not the only one with a lot to think about after the zhian’tara.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Jadzia Dax, Torias Dax/Nilani Kahn
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Ready for the Colors to Turn to Gold

Julian realizes he’s spaced out. He’s standing at his lab bench, a rack of tubes in front of him, and he can’t for the life of him remember which reagents he’s added to what. It’s Torias again. He knows the memories aren’t real, or rather, not his - that’s not the issue. It has the quality of a lingering dream, the kind that sticks with you not because it was particularly vivid, but because it’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen, the sort of thing that friend would say. And the realm of the plausible always hits differently than a simple nightmare. 

It had been stupid, trying to get work done on the same day as a zhian’tara. He sighs and stuffs the rack of tubes back into the replicator. He goes to find Jadzia. 

When he’d looked into the fire and closed his eyes, and when Torias had opened them, it hadn’t felt like a dream. It had felt like waking up. The daredevil rush of soaring, the gut-wrench of breaking Trill’s orbit and veering out into the blackness of space. The more earthbound, equally perilous thrill the first time Nilani had brought him to her apartment, grinned at him, and kissed him hard. He had imagined it would be like watching someone else from the back of his own mind, but it wasn’t at all. It had felt like him. It had seemed so right.

And, of course, the end. The shudder of the shuttlecraft that tells him he’s in trouble a full second before his instruments do. The console shattering; bits of glass and wire slicing his face and chest, the cockpit crumpling around him as he curls instinctively around his gut (and that isn’t right, thinks Julian, protect your head-); the flashing error light on the emergency transporter; the moment of pure whiteness as a piece of bulkheaded slides smoothly through his shoulder and into the seat behind him. His body fully in control now, running on muscle memory as he watches himself hit the emergency eject button, as he is propelled up and out, as his leg, caught under the console, is twisted into a new position and snaps, as the section of bulkhead rips back through him, and he feels the shuttlecraft fall away from him and suddenly everything is very quiet.

He grasps at, fumbles with, consciousness. He’s in the low atmosphere but still too high to pull his chute. He tumbles, and the nausea pushes his awareness farther away, and he knows the shock is coming and nothing matters if he can’t get this right and he steels himself and pushes with everything he has, reserves of strength and resolve and pure stubbornness he supposes he was saving for this moment, as he pulls his back into an arch, controlling his fall. Clouds pass around him, and he struggles to distinguish them from the whiteness on the edge of his vision. He focuses on the drops of blood falling away from him, speeding toward the earth, unhindered by the air resistance of the rest of his body, and he wills himself to go faster, for the clusters of buildings he can barely distinguish to be closer, because he’s increasingly certain that his life depends on it. As long as he can pull the chute Dax will be safe, probably. He can feel the creature inside him, who is him, miraculously whole, bruised but willing, ready to carry on without him, and that’s the most important thing, of course it is, but he wants to live too, dammit, and every second he’s in the air he can feel that possibility slipping away. But he’s slipping as well, the agony in his leg and shoulder numbing; he’s losing control of his descent. He should pull the chute. If he does, he’ll die. And he will have failed Nilani, unutterably, unforgivably.

If he doesn’t, he will have failed Dax. 

He can’t see the chute blossoming behind him, but he feels its jerk as the earth rushing to meet him suddenly stops, hovers, just out of reach. Then the clouds come.

Julian finds Jadzia in the replimat, and she must see something in his face as he sits down. “It can be disorienting,” she says. “I’ve taken part in zhian’taras myself. It’s normal. It’ll wear off in a couple days.” She gets up and orders him some kind of tea he’s never heard of. “Best thing to do is get some sleep.” She forces the tea into his hands. Julian sniffs it suspiciously. It smells… mossy.

“Is this how you feel all the time?” he blurts. But now that the question hangs between them, he’s not sure he wants to know the answer. Where, exactly, does Jadzia carry eight lifetimes of baggage? And after so long, how much of his friend is really Jadzia?

“That’s where the years of training come in,” she says, unbothered. “But sometimes. And some hosts are harder than others. Torias...” For a moment, she just looks at him. “Well, I really liked being Torias, and I guess I thought you would, too.”

Jadzia gestures at the mug. Julian sips the tea. Its taste is distracting, but inoffensive. He considers the bubbles swirling on the surface. He feels his nerves steady, then settle.

“I should have given you more warning. I forget, sometimes. How it ended.” Jadzia sighs. “To be honest, you remind me of him.”

Julian looks up at her then, and for an instant he can see Torias, not Jadzia, behind her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Fall" by Imagine Dragons


End file.
